The Canonization by John Donne: Love Poem Which Achieves its Emotional Effect Through Intellectual Predominance
The Canonization by John Donne reveals an intellectual predominance and it is
intensely personal. Through a complex network of contrasts and paradoxes,
images and religious fables here in this poem the poet seeks to declare the
sanctity of his love.
The
composition of Donne’s poem, The Canonization is after his marriage with Anne
More. It is because he in his this poem at the very outset speaks of his ruined
fortune and he ascribe the blight upon his fortune to his marriage. Though he
feels quite undone, he does not know any abatement in the intensity of his
love for Anne. He is so lost in his amour that he does not care a hang for the cursing tongue of others and the opening line appears to be bursting with loving
impulses laced with impatience and defiance: “For Gods shake hold your tongue, and
let me love.” The ruling passion of his life is love and he has no regard for
the riches of the world. He does not for every person who amass fortune by currying
favors with the royally. In availed lone of disdain he speaks of their craving
for earthly gains and forbids them to interfere with his love making:
"With
wealth your mind with arts improve,
Take
you a course, get you a place, Or the king
real, or his stamped face"
Donne
says that his world has contracted to his companionship with his wife, and he
looks upon her as his anchorage. This experience of oneness I love is a
recurrent mollify in his love poems. In The Anniversaries he makes an emphatic declaration
of this primacy of love that admits of no this else in life: “Here upon earth,
we are king.” It is also akin to the idea of selsufficiency in love that finds
an expression in The Sunni Rising: “She is all states, and all princes I: This
themes of the suoemacy of mutual love is not in the vein of pert arch who, in
terms of extravagant hyperboles, writes complicacy verses of adoration.
The poet
talks more about the nature of love in terms of a host of images in the third
stanza. Here he presents the traditional image the fly and the taper with a
slight variation. Here the lover and the beloved are flies and tapers:
“Call
her a one, me another fly,
We
are tapers too, and at our own cost die.”
 |
| John Donne |
The poet
reinforces three more images: ‘this Eagle’, ‘the Dove’ and ‘the phoenix’. By
the process he further explains his love experiences. In the medieval fable the
old eagle flies up to the sun and is scored and then plumages in to a wall to
renew in youthful energy. This image explains the central idea of love tha5t
hopes to renew itself through dying. The image of dove has a religious overtone
and life have for each other. In the New Testament there is an accent of the
Holy Ghosh descending upon Christ at the time of his baptism mal ceremony, life
a dove. T.S. Eliot uses these images of the dove upon Christ in Four Quartets
as a symbol of the purifying fire of God’s love and looks upon it as ‘The only
hope or else despair.’ Donne correlates this mining of dove with his love and
the love they exhibit has a purgatorial value. The phoenix image also explains
the basic idea of love. That discovers sense of fulfillment in undergoing pain.
The phoenix renews her youth only when she is burnt, burnt alive. It is also
recorded as one neutral thing (sex)’ the poet uses the images of eagle and
phoenix because both are images of renew al or resurrection. In his poem,
phoenix, D.H. Lawrence says, “she is renewing her youth like the eagle” The
idea of death is ambient: party negative and party positive and poet play on
the identity of implications:
“We die
and rise the same and prove
Mysterious by this love.”
Mysterious by this love.”
The
expression we die and rise the same is paradoxical in the sense that the poet
feels crucified to the words, but he gains by cleansing himself of the cross.
The piety
feels the consecration of love and becomes a saint or martyr of love:
“And by
these hymns, all shall approve
Us
canonized for love.”
j.
Smith rightly avers, …..at
one level there is a consummation of religioamoris, on which the poem is bult
“(Celebration of Donne)
The poet
does not have any regret that the lovers do not have any glamorous trappings of
a hero recorded in a legend or a chronicle. He says that their canonization for
love is without any fanfare, without any pretensions. It comes to them through
their steadfastness and constancy in love in the face of all adversities. The
experiences have nothing transcendental about it. It is rooted in the stark
reality of life. It becomes an archetypal pattern of love worthy of emulation,
it others choose so:
“And
thus invoke us; you whom reverend lone
Made one
another’s hermitage”
This
apotheosis of love intercedes with the god of love himself on behalf love. Lovers are still struggling for the heroic resolution to make their love complete.
Finally, overruling the skepticism of the other person, the poet develops a magnificent
vision that incorporates the whole world consisting of countries, towns and
courts in to its capacious domain. The poet in terms of the images of the image
of the ‘glasses’ of the eyes says that the whole world shrinks and becomes
reflected in the eyes of the beloved.
Note: John Donne's "The Canonization" is a love poem that achieves its emotional impact primarily through intellectual dominance.
👉Paradoxical Language: Donne employs paradoxes to challenge conventional notions of love.
👉Wit and Argument: The poem's structure resembles a logical argument, making it emotionally resonant through intellectual engagement.
👉Complex Imagery: Donne's intricate imagery adds depth and richness to the emotional landscape.
👉Emotional Resolution: The poem ultimately celebrates the lovers' devotion, transcending physicality for a spiritual union.
The poems of John Donne : Donne, John, 1572-1631 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn
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